


Thrall

by SongsofSamael



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Bonding, F/F, Mates, Mental Coercion, Souled Vampire(s), Soulmates, i am trash, stay tuned friends, uh there's violence but only at the very end
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4458554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongsofSamael/pseuds/SongsofSamael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny; canonically a werewolf in this series, finds her intended mate in the worst possible place: Matska; Carmilla's prodigal sister, back to destroy Silas and all its inhabitants. Each is more than the other bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wake-Up Thrall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neverander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverander/gifts).



Mattie's back arches under her hand. She's more sinuous than Carmilla; more serpent than cat. Her spine is a riverbed of bare bones; a mountain chain of sharp edges. She curls tighter around her pillow, then rolls over enough to glance at Danny, her dark eyes surveying the redhead from under heavy lids. Danny breathes in, unaware that she stopped breathing at all. The hypnotic pull of eyes darker brown than the deepest parts of the forest drags her closer. 

Mattie's lips curl; devious. Sensuous. She smells like cotton candy; lotion, leather, blood, and above all else: sex. Danny settles in beside her, eyes flickering with restlessness. The need to keep touching her short-circuits everything else. Her hands sweep under smooth elbows, over soft forearms, until their hands are entwined, threading peach through brown like sunlight through bare limbs of trees. Their legs hook as well; Mattie directing her ankles around Danny's own. The morning birds sing.

"It's much too early to rise, Danielle." The voice is more of a purred suggestion than an actual comment. Danny's eyelids droop, and the long-limbed Summer Society head shifts sluggishly on the bed. The feather mattress seems abruptly all too welcoming. The scent of Mattie fills her head with nonsensical thoughts like kisses and cuddles and pillow fights; lethargically dancing in her dreamy consciousness like oh, so many visions of sugarplums. Dark fingers follow suit in the waltz, traipsing up Danny's arm, across her shoulder, and into her crimson hair, pushing it back in long, straight ripples across her bare back. Danny is hungrily reminded of the way Mattie kissed her; between the shoulders, all the way down to her tailbone, then across her hips, praising each in French. Papillion, she'd whispered, spreading shadows of bruises across Danny's skin like ink stains. Butterfly. One she'd called forth from a chrysalis of sheets in an endless cycle of rise and fall, of gasp and moan...Danny squints, trying to remember how it all began, before Mattie slips her a kiss that leaves her head spinning anew. Her hands rise to cradle soft, cool cheeks. She feels a graze of teeth scrape her bottom lip as Mattie laughs; laughs low and velveteen and thrumming, before she withdraws.

"Wouldn't you prefer to stay here, with me?" Mattie murmurs, cocking her head so she's propped more upright against the pillows. Danny blinks drowsily, trying to shake off the sensation of deja vu that rushes through her. The song of the birds outside seems to be on a loop. The sunlight raking across her freckled back moves in the same exact pattern, over and over--she can see pieces of it on the wall; never-changing, ever-present. Mattie's eyes have a red gleam in them, and Danny tries; desperately, to remember something. 

"M--my..." Her head aches. It's much easier to just do as Mattie says, but diligence pursues. It's in her nature. In her blood. The unfaltering fealty that is a wolf's first primary trait pushes against the consolation of sweetness and the illusion of safety. It snaps; baring white teeth at a throat the color of deepest chocolate. It whines and howls for freedom, in the back of her aching, disintegrating mind splintering into a thousand hallucinating shards of light. Enchantment in the richest sense; a dream, this was...this had to be...

Her mind flashes back to the frightened face of Perry; Perry clutching a bloody butcher knife and kneeling on the floor, muttering in frantic German. Laf cradling JP-Will, whose red-stained face is hidden in their shoulder. Carmilla; stricken and holding herself, because Laura won't hold her. Laura Hollis, the woman of the hour, staring at Danny with cold brown eyes, her hands balled into tight little fists. And Kirsch--what was left of him, shit--

"My friends," Danny whispers. Mattie looks at her, one hand splayed across Danny's cheek. A thumb dips between Danny's rosy lips, and Danny reaches for it before she even thinks about it, closing her mouth around the digit. Mattie looks sympathetic, then. Apologetic, even. Birds sing the same damn songs. The sun flashes and loops again, lolling against the wall in a fractured, jittery wave. Danny's eyes flutter as the vampiress's thumb traces the tip of her tongue. The memory is already slipping, but Danny clings to it, wrestling affection for survival. She had to wake up. This was a dream, she needed to...

Mattie sighs between sharp teeth. 

"Oh, Danielle," she mutters, her fingers tightening on the side of Danny's face. 

"I wish you hadn't remembered that."

And then Matska snaps her neck.


	2. They Thrall It "Puppy Love"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback to when Danielle meets Matska. Matska meets Danielle. As you can imagine, this is the prelude to everything going to Hell in a handbasket (oft literal in the case of Silas) at a rapidly devolving rate (to quote a very irritated and slightly-smoldering LaF).

[June 2015.]

The first time Danny sees her, Matska is a piece of the night stitched together by Cheshire smiles.

She calls upon each person in Silas individually. "The nosy mother-ferret", she calls a stiffened Perry. "The one in the vest with the chemical stains past saving" is a bored-looking LaF. "Carmilla's chewtoy" is an agape Laura; naturally (something that irks Danny twice over, fuck if she can figure out why). "The idiot" suits the grumpy Kirsch just fine; and JP is graced only with something akin to a bloodcurdling shriek before Mattie moves on to Carmilla. The sound is close enough to a nickname in vampiric languages; probably. Danny figures she can always brush up on that later.

It is only when Mattie's eyes turn her way that Danny feels something she hasn't before. 

It goes beyond irritation, indignation, or unease. It's something similar to--a thing she can puzzle out of daydreams which might be memories, things whispered to her by her long-dead mother; whose fingers methodically pet Danny's flaming hair and fade in and out of the shadows. 

It's a connection. Running more deeply and densely than any Danny has struggled to make at a campus that seems Hell-bent on forging friendships for life (and then shortening that life hence). 

It's--vital. It's necessary. As water and air and every other cliche Danny can possibly drum up in the three seconds it takes Matska to look her over.

The woman made of shadows, velvet, and class offers her a dangerous smile and touches one of the baubles on her necklace, making its amethyst eye catch the light. Danny follows the brown eyes more than the violet jewel; transfixed--hands balled into fists, ready to fight. Ready to defend her friends. 

Eternity stretches. Their link intensifies; the draw of Mattie's eyes as soothing and placid as twin forest pools. Danny's fists slowly unclench; unfurling strong and freckly fingers with a faint stretch of talons that recede back into human nails. It seems like the world around them is spinning backwards; everything is haywire and gradual and surreal. The morning's activities seem pointless. Tickling Laura till she's gasping to try and alleviate her gloom and doom broadcasts, braiding Perry's hair, stopping LaF from blowing up the fifth floor's bathrooms ("all at once, which was VERY IMPRESSIVE, or it would've been, if Danny had just let me finish")--even the quiet conversation with Carmilla about whether or not to make a homesick Kirsch the first of her pack seems pointless. 

She is a planet revolving without a core, slowly unraveling in the wake of a void's pull. A star collapsing, she lets Matska swallow her whole with a single look. 

"Puppy," is all Mattie whispers her way. It sends a shiver rushing down her spine; it leaves her neck crawling with murmurs and affections that could be; that are now possibilities, somehow, woven into the way Mattie speaks to her, in the way she moves out of the room: a sashay of languid ease trailing the scent of lilacs and bloody death and leather.

Danny freezes, for the first time in her life, as the room of offended people explodes around her. Carmilla is silent from the back of the room, as still as Danny is, her narrow eyes watchful and worried all at the same time. Wordless and stricken, Danny turns as if in slow-motion in the entropy that is Carmilla's deceased mother's old quarters, surrounded by a world of flying feathers, angry gesticulations, and a dull roar.

Carmilla shakes her head slightly, and Danny attempts in turn to shake off the cobwebs the black widow wrapped around her, picking pieces of fragmented thought out of her jangling mind. 

"Why don't we all just--" her voice is weaker than usual, lost in the fray. It is Laura who hears her first, looks way, way up at her from her spot by the computer--always recording. Always on top of what's going on. Danny holds up her hands, then touches the bridge of her nose, focusing hard on--focusing, actually, come to think of it.

"Bros, something's up with Danny." Thank you, Kirsch. Laura at least had the decency to reach out rather than say anything. Danny can feel her pulse spiking in ways she hasn't felt in years. Everyone's eyes are on her. The claustrophobia is real and her talons cut into her palms as she tightens her hands again, trying to remember how to breathe clearly. Everything is floral and violent in her sinuses.

It had been such a peaceful afternoon, too. Sunshine. A limited amount of bloodshed. She'd gotten an A- on her theology paper for Religious Comparisons and Contrasts (by comparing the cult following of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to the cult following of Bigfoot, but that wasn't important right now)...but suddenly, Carmilla's estranged sister had waltzed into their lives and made herself a thorn in everyone's sides. 

And yet, Danny can't scrub the scent of Matska from her nose. The lilacs cling, clouding her head and tugging at her senses. She wants to walk out the door after her. Just for some fresh air, for a chance to ask her just what she hoped to achieve; barging in here like this, with her--with her legs, and her eyes, and her deep, tolling-bell laugh that was as harmonious as it was funereal. 

She is unaware of the blood dripping out of her nose till Carmilla is there; reaching up to her, swiping a thumb under Danny's nostrils and placing a handkerchief to her face. The handkerchief smells more like chocolate and soy; like something soft and downy. Cat dander, too. 

Danny sneezes blood and Carmilla's affronted expression is justified by the spattering of red across it. It's enough to break the tension. LaF; strangely, starts laughing, only to be chastised by a horrified Perry. JP has to be corralled by a careful Kirsch, still unable to believe his eyes about his not-so-dead friend. Laura is there, rubbing Danny's arm as Carmilla raises both eyebrows and leans back in place, leaving Danny to hold the handkerchief. 

"That's one way to get my attention, Xena."

Danny cannot apologize enough.

Danny cannot apologize enough for a lot of things; already done and yet to come.


End file.
